so i'm playing a chaotic neutral bard in the freeport setting (yar!). we just made it to level 6 but only 3 months of game time have gone by so we're all still very young. the human female fighter is 6th level, and she's only 16. the DM told us the characters (who really have no reason to asociate with each other now that the adventure has wrapped) to write up a history of what our pc's do for the next 3 years. he's doing this to give us an opportunity for character development, and i suppose, to get our chronological ages more in line with our abilities.

none of the characters in the party are good, we're all true neutral or chaotic neutral, and one of the players keeps passing notes to the DM so he may actually be evil for all i know. a few of the characters, mine in particular, have been slowly slipping toward evil. we ARE pirates but still... i've never played an evil character and i don't really like it.

i've decided to write an alignment change into my history. i can always just PLAY the character differently and i intend to. I'm doing the alignment change as sort of a reminder to myself to not kill people i don't need to, to not torture old crewmates just because its faster than interrogating them, that sort of thing.

but i'm having trouble reconciling what i'd like to do with the character with the alignment change. he IS a pirate after all. so i guess my two questions are:

1. how do you think a chaotic good pirate would act?

2. what do you think the key differences are between a Chaotic Good PC and a Chaotic Neutral PC?

the pc's previous history gives him a good reason to hate both merchants and the legitimate navy, so engaging in piracy against who he sees as evil bastards isn't a problem. but the way he does it, and the way he's been treating everyone else up until now is. I suppose i could just give him a loose moral code against killing without justification and against torture. and i imagine a good justification for killing could be "i tried to plunder your boat and you attacked me, so now i'm justified in killing you".

i think that for him, the right thing just happened to coincide with what was the best thing for him. although that last scene of the movie may prove you right. based on the feedback i've gotten here and on enworld, i think my problem is i've really been playing more CE than CN, and i may not need to go CG to change the pc around. this is the problem with the alignment system, to concrete on shifty things. but whatever.

Jack will square his deals and he's not one to kill without necessity. If he kills Anamaria, then that's just evil. She certainly doesn't seem like the kind of girl one can ignore, and so he dealt with her to get her off his back. He's a fair pirate, if not lawful, and he might be teetering on good, but I'd still mark him CN.

You could probably Kidnap and ransom people instead of killing them. I had a great time with my druid pirate. Whenever we attacked a ship, I would entangle/knock unconscious/incapacitate as many people as possible, so we always ended up with tons of prisoners. It was great.

And the story element would be great! You could have him break in to kill a pirate only to find him holding his baby girl or something and have a change of heart.

Possibly, but I think Letters of Marque were outlets for the chaotics of the society to vent and come home. Adherence to an advantageous rule is not necessarily lawful. "It's more of a guideline actually."

I think a Chaotic Good pirate would pick his targets to avoid harming the innocent or "the working man" and focus on corrupt government officials, non-good pirates, and robber-baron type wealthy people.

I would imagine he'd avoid robbing steerage-class passengers in ships his boarded, and would keep bloodshed to a minimum against non-pirate foes.

Robin Hood on the high seas. You attack other ships, but do it for a good cause.

2. what do you think the key differences are between a Chaotic Good PC and a Chaotic Neutral PC?

I'll mostly let other people handle this one. I tend to thing "how does my character act? Is that CG or CN?" instead of the other way around.

In my interpretation of the ever-vague alignment system is that good=doing stuff for others and evil=doing stuff for yourself. So if you sacrifice yourself for the sake of others, you're really good. If you sacrifice others for the sake of yourself, you're really evil. And then there's kind of a spectrum, with neutral being in the middle.

What I wouldn't do is play CN as insane. It always bugs me when people do that. Also when they say "I'm CN so I can do whatever I want!" Well, not exactly. No.

Go rent "Captain Blood" (old Errol Flynn movie, but worth the watching) if you want to see a CG pirate in action. He's pretty much 'Robin Hood on the high seas'.

If you want a more recent example, Will Turner is probably CG while Jack Sparrow is CN. Barbosa is probably CE, although that's a fine line to be skirting.

I personally love CN characters. I generally play them acting on what seems like a good idea at the time. This means one uses common sense (jumping off bridges is stupid, unless the odds of survival are likely better by jumping than staying to fight the bad men) and one does what would be in the interest of the party or the PC, but if there's room for whimsy, use it. Sometimes she let prisoners go because she felt like it, and they'd gotten everything they needed from them. On one occasions, she killed a prisoner (again, after getting all the necessary info) because he annoyed her. A CG character wouldn't kill a prisoner for that reason, and would try to act under the perception of what is the common good.

Chaotic good help those that need help. Chaotic neutral help themselves. Chaotic evil stunt help.

Neutral evil and chaotic neutral are closely related. Neutral evil is, "I do whatever I want to get what I want." Chaotic neutral is, "I do whatever will get me what I want with the least amount of trouble." Chaotic good is, "I help the people that don't get what they want because the law or evil makes it so."

well a decnte CG Pirate is RObin Hood with a boat. Simply put attacking only evil aligned ships or even other pirates but keeping most of the booty and giving the rest to the poor. Another version is a pirate who doesnt wish to hurt anyone and goes out of his weay to do so. He will even take pity and help people not get hurt.

A- chaotic evil = dead men tell no talesB- chaotic nutral= leave one alive to tell the tale,oh and maybe anyone else i likeC- chaotic good= leave everyone alive to tell the tale and be glad you freed them of the burdens of there heavy purses